Abstract
In her recent paper ‘Non-complicit: Revisiting Hans Asperger’s Career in Nazi-era Vienna,’ Dean Falk claims to refute what she calls ‘allegations’ about Hans Asperger’s role during National Socialism documented in my 2018 paper ‘Hans Asperger, National Socialism, and “race hygiene” in Nazi-era Vienna’ and Edith Sheffer’s book ‘Asperger’s Children.’ Falk’s paper, which relies heavily on online translation software, does not contain a single relevant piece of new evidence, but abounds with mistranslations, misrepresentations of the content of sources, and basic factual errors, and omits everything that does not support the author’s agenda of defending Hans Asperger’s record. The paper should never have passed peer review and, in view of the academic credibility of all parties concerned, it should be retracted.
Highlights
In her paper ‘Non-complicit: Revisiting Hans Asperger’s Career in Nazi-era Vienna’, evolutionary anthropologist Dean Falk claims to refute what she calls ‘allegations’ raised against Asperger (Czech 2018; Sheffer 2018) ‘with newly translated and chronologically-ordered information that takes into account Hitler’s deceptive “halt” to the T4 euthanasia program in 1941.’. She states that ‘[i]t is highly unlikely that Asperger was aware of the T4 program when he referred Herta Schreiber to Vienna’s child “euthanasia” facility Am Spiegelgrund or when he mentioned that institution 4 months later on the medical chart of another girl, Elisabeth Schreiber’ (Falk 2019)
The ‘newly translated’ information presented to ‘exonerate’ Asperger appears largely irrelevant to the questions at hand, while the various arguments put forward are characterized by fundamental factual errors, misleading quotes, mistranslations of German language sources
Edith Sheffer’s attempt to define the concept of autistic psychopathy as intrinsically tarnished by an affinity to National Socialist ideology is conceptually and methodologically weak, as she exaggerates the importance attributed at the time to the concept of Gemüt, which supposedly defines what she calls ‘Nazi psychiatry.’
Summary
In her paper ‘Non-complicit: Revisiting Hans Asperger’s Career in Nazi-era Vienna’, evolutionary anthropologist Dean Falk claims to refute what she calls ‘allegations’ raised against Asperger (Czech 2018; Sheffer 2018) ‘with newly translated and chronologically-ordered information that takes into account Hitler’s deceptive “halt” to the T4 euthanasia program in 1941.’ She states that ‘[i]t is highly unlikely that Asperger was aware of the T4 program when he referred Herta Schreiber to Vienna’s child “euthanasia” facility Am Spiegelgrund or when he mentioned that institution 4 months later on the medical chart of another (unrelated) girl, Elisabeth Schreiber’ (Falk 2019).
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